April 06, 2010

sarah palin - why is there a 'there' there?

John McWhorter, the linguist and writer, has penned a very interesting take on the speech patterns of the world's most famous Alaskan. He manages to say much more than "she talks stoopid". I mean, he pretty much does say that, but the piece is also a reflection on the way political speech has changed radically over the course of the last hundred years. And McWhorter picks up, as only a linguist would, on something very specific and psychologically revealing about Palin's speech - her over-use of abstraction:

What truly distinguishes Palin’s speech is its utter subjectivity: that
is, she speaks very much from the inside of her head, as someone
watching the issues from a considerable distance. The there
fetish, for instance — Palin frequently displaces statements with an
appended “there,” as in “We realize that more and more Americans are
starting to see the light there...” But where? Why the distancing
gesture? At another time, she referred to Condoleezza Rice trying to
“forge that peace.” That peace? You mean that peace way over there — as
opposed to the peace that you as Vice-President would have been responsible for forging? She’s far, far away from that peace.